The term “streaming media” generally refers to the reception of multimedia content, such as television programming and other audiovisual content, through a communications network at a bitrate enabling presentation of the content in real time as it is received. Streaming media may be viewed live or on-demand and provided by, for example, a pay Television (TV) provider, a Video-On-Demand (VOD) provider, or a remotely-controlled placeshifting device. In the case of VOD services, the media content may be stored in a pre-encoded format and distributed to a client media receiver, such as a mobile phone or Set-Top Box (STB), over a Content Delivery Network (CD N). In the case of placeshifted media, a digital video recorder (DVR), STB, or a similar device having placeshifting capabilities and located within a user's residence may encode and transmit selected streaming media to a client media receiver, such as a mobile phone or tablet, operated by the end user. Increasingly, a demand has arisen to provide such streaming content in a linear multichannel format as, for example, Over-The-Top (OTT) TV programming.
Ideally, multichannel streaming services mimic the familiar in-home viewing experience provided by legacy cable and satellite broadcast systems. However, network reliability issues, bandwidth constraints, latency effects, and other such limiting factors may negatively impact multichannel streaming services delivered through the Internet and similar communications networks. As a specific example, relatively prolonged delays or temporal lags can occur in implementing user-requested channel changes when streaming multichannel content to a mobile phone or other client media receiver. Depending upon dynamic network parameters, such as varying bandwidth constraints, the duration of such lags (as measured from input of the channel change request to presentation of the newly-requested streaming channel) can approach or exceed 10 seconds in certain instances. Such pronounced lags in executing channel change requests detracts from the viewing experience and may be frustrating to end users accustom to near instantaneous channel browsing (colloquially, “channel surfing”) offered by traditional broadcast systems. As an additional drawback, prolonged channel browsing by an end user can result in the transmission of a needless series of channel change requests to the streaming media server, which consumes network bandwidth and increases server processing demands.
It is thus desirable to lessen, if not eliminate lags in implementing end user request to change streaming channels during multichannel streaming sessions. Similarly, it is desirable to better utilize network bandwidth capacity and alleviate media server processing loads in multichannel streaming environments by, for example, reducing excessive channel change requests generated by a client media receiver when an end user engages in prolonged channel browsing or “channel surfing” behaviors. The following describes devices, systems, methods, and program products providing such desirable features and characteristics. Other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.